Tag Archives: encounter

Bad ideas, Excavation, Mirror Worlds, Right watch, Violence-Conflict

Ishrat Jahan, Narendra Modi and the IB: How Not to be Non-Non Terrorist

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The CBI charge-sheet in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and its aftermath has led the BJP and supporters of Narendra Modi (within and without the Intelligence Bureau) to discover the joys of time travel. Apparently, David Coleman Headley’s testimony in 2010 (which says that Ishrat Jahan was an LeT operative) has given the Gujarat police officials a means to tell us why they killed Ishrat Jahan in 2004. Or, following on from Shivam Vij’s recent tweets, we could say: “The IB says that Headley says that Ishrat Jahan was a non-non terrorist…”

We will discuss more about this heady Headley testimony and ‘non-non terrorism’ later, but for now, let us admit that the secret of how a statement in the future can influence the unfolding an event six years in the past is known only to those who are partisan to Mr. Modi and his party. It is not for nothing that they call him a Yug Purush (‘The Man of Time’)- all times, past, present and future, can do his bidding, or so thinks the BJP. Continue reading Ishrat Jahan, Narendra Modi and the IB: How Not to be Non-Non Terrorist →

Everyday Life, Government, Media politics, Politics, Violence-Conflict

The Jamia Nagar Encounter: ‘Curioser and Curioser’

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The well known journalist Praveen Swami, who is celebrated by some as an ‘encounter expert’ and ‘authority on terrorism’ has finally offered his comment on the Jamia Nagar encounter in the Hindu. See Behind the Batla House Encounter. It smells fresh.

Now, I really like Lewis Carrol, and am happy that Swami has invoked Carrol, Alice and Wonderland while criticising those (like me) who have chosen to take a skeptical stance towards the official handout of what exactly happened on the 19th of October in L-18, Batla House, Jamia Nagar. With due respect to Praveen Swami, lets read him in the spirit of Carrol and come to conclusions about who is Alice, who is the Red Queen and who is the white Rabbit, in due course.

It takes far more intelligence to read Swami than it must take for Swami to write like Swami. Which is disconcerting, given, that in Swamis case, he has a whole bureau full of intelligence to back him up, and all we have is the stuff between our individual ears, and occasionally our own eyes, our own ears and our own two feet. No wonder, we have to strain our credibility to believe the six and more impossible things that the police’s special cell, the intelligence bureau and its anointed experts would have us swallow whole for breakfast, with each morning’s headlines in the newspapers.

Continue reading The Jamia Nagar Encounter: ‘Curioser and Curioser’ →

Identities, Politics, Violence-Conflict

On Being Muslim: Shahrukh Alam

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Guest post by SHAHRUKH ALAM

This afternoon, I saw on TV, the ticker advertising a Special Feature. The programme was going to be aired later in the day and was called “Young, Educated Killers”.  And for the next few seconds, I wondered who the title might be referring to: not the ‘encounter specialists’, surely? The economists who frame policies for the new, resurgent India, perhaps? People on the National Disaster Management Commission, possibly? Or since it was of topical interest, The Board of Directors for Lehman Brothers? Or even Patent attorneys for multinational Pharmaceutical companies? But then the visuals came on and I have to admit I was most embarrassed at having thought such dark thoughts about the aforementioned good people. Continue reading On Being Muslim: Shahrukh Alam →

Everyday Life, Government, Violence-Conflict

Some Questions About the Delhi Encounter

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By Shabnam Hashmi, Satya Sivaraman, Manisha Sethi, Tanweer Fazal, Arshad Alam, Pallavi Deka

First published on Countercurrents.

A team comprising activists, academicians and journalists visited the site of the police operation against alleged terrorists staying in an apartment in Jamia Nagar in the afternoon of 20.09.2008 (Saturday). Two alleged terrorists Atif and Sajid, along with Mohan Chand Sharma, an inspector of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell died in the operation while a third alleged terrorist was arrested. Continue reading Some Questions About the Delhi Encounter →